


and in your arms i find solace

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Series: daemon verse [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Daemon Separation, Daemon Touching, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak, F/M, Hair Brushing, His Dark Materials Inspired, Romantic Fluff, Season/Series 01, Sexual Tension, Sleepy Cuddles, Teasing, unsettled daemons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22835026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: Felicity's relationship with Oliver is incredibly new, and overshadowed by the fact her boyfriend is the Hood and she is his technical support. When Felicity messes up one night by causing the system to crash during a high-speed pursuit, she and her daemon Brynn retreat and she can't help but break down. Oliver and Strelka are there to comfort her.
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Series: daemon verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2075769
Comments: 56
Kudos: 189





	and in your arms i find solace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inlovewithimpossibility](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithimpossibility/gifts).



> **  
>  [1st part of the daemon AU.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15906561/chapters/37075926)   
>  **
> 
> **  
> [2nd part here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059012)  
> **
> 
> **Background** if you don't want to read the other parts, and also a reminder: Daemons exist, and they are extensions of their human's soul in animal form. They can only travel about 5-10 feet from their human. Children's daemons are able to change shape but when they reach their teenage years and progress into adulthood, daemons Settle into one form that is meant to represent their human's personality. This is known to be caused by Dust, a type of particle from Space and between the universes. Oliver's daemon Strelka (she/her) was Settled as a puma before the island, where they were experimented on; the Dust was extracted from them, leaving Strelka Unsettled again, and they were also Separated, meaning Strelka does not have to remain by Oliver's side. Felicity has never been affected by Dust since childhood so her daemon Brynn (he/him) has always been Unsettled. Felicity has also been on the run from ARGUS since she was a child as ARGUS wants to experiment on people with Unsettled daemons. Oliver has made a deal with Amanda Waller that ARGUS leaves Felicity alone and Felicity lives with the Queens under Oliver's protection and watch.
> 
> Strelka's favorite forms: puma, wolf, black falcon, hare, panther (Hood)  
> Brynn's favorite forms: ocelot, ermine, goldfinch, colt

Felicity doesn’t really do _this_ often.

‘This’ being… curl up in the corner of the shower stall with her clothes still on and soaked because of the running water, which is turned on to hopefully drown out her sobs. She’s been in the shower long enough at this point that her toes have wrinkled up in her cold, wet socks and the water itself has turned cold, which she thought was literally impossible as the Queen mansion never seems to run out of hot water. Brynn, her wonderful and beautiful companion of an Unsettled daemon, is currently balled up in ermine form in the other corner of the shower, by the drain; his white fur is water-logged and he’s shivering from the cold, but he hasn’t uttered a word to complain about his discomfort. In fact, he hasn’t spoken since they arrived back at the mansion.

Today was a shitty, shitty day.

First of all, she got into an argument with Thea over breakfast, as Oliver’s little sister accused her of sleeping with her brother behind all of their backs. That is unequivocally false. Felicity and Oliver have never had sex. The two of them have started a tentative romantic relationship, yes, but they still sleep in their separate rooms in the Queen mansion, and the most intimate they’ve been with each other so far is kissing. It’s not because they don’t want to - Felicity is fully aware of how attracted Oliver is to her, and she’s suffered from many erotic dreams at this point about her and Oliver’s first time. The two of them just don’t believe they’re ready yet for that step. 

They’ve been keeping their relationship a secret from Moira, Walter, Thea, and their daemons, only because they’re both a little wary of what Oliver’s family’s reactions might be. Thea was pretty angry when she accused Felicity over turkey bacon and eggs, so the blonde is certain they made the right decision to wait to tell them. It’s also because their relationship is so new that they’re keeping it a secret. They’ve only gone on two small dates - one dinner, one coffee date - and been together for three weeks. Although during those three weeks they’ve become incredibly close, and Felicity feels like it’s been three years rather than weeks, Oliver has expressed that he would like them to get to the two-month stage before airing their relationship to the rest of the world.

The next shitty thing that happened - and this was the shittiest thing - was that she messed up badly in the Foundry during a high-speed chase. It was only Felicity’s fourth night actually sitting in the Foundry and providing technical support to Oliver; Diggle was in Chicago seeing his mother so wasn’t available to run comms. The archer was on his Ducati pursuing the lead of a human-trafficking operation driving a Camero, and needed Felicity to track the car using traffic cams and give him guidance, so he didn’t lose the criminal. Strelka was grounded, in her panther form that she usually took whenever Oliver was out in the streets as the Hood, and needed to stay back to guard the criminal’s victims until they could be rescued by police. That was one of the advantages of Oliver and his daemon being partially Separated: the two of them could be in two different places at once, which wasn’t possible with non-Separated human-daemon pairs. As Strelka wasn’t able to provide support from the skies, Felicity had to.

And she failed. Felicity attempted to use a load of new algorithms and code to speed up the CCTV footage processing, but Oliver’s systems hadn’t been able to handle it - they shut down and cast her into complete darkness. Blind, Felicity wasn’t able to provide _any_ support. The criminal got away and Oliver, not understanding why Felicity was sending him in the wrong direction and how he’d lost the perp, yelled at her over comms.

Felicity just tore out her earpiece and drove back to the Queen mansion tearfully, immediately hiding in her bathroom.

She’s been crying in her shower ever since.

“I didn’t realize how hard this would be,” she whispers to Brynn, who raises his head at the sound of her voice and crawls towards her tiredly, having to wade through the water to clamber up onto her arm and cling to her soaked blouse.

“Well, I think this is the nature of the job,” Brynn replies softly, nuzzling into her neck. “Sometimes… sometimes we don’t win. Sometimes Oliver loses.”

“But it’s not his fault that that guy got away, it’s mine. If it weren’t for me, Oliver would have caught him.”

“We can never know what would and could have happened, Felicity,” her daemon continues to try and soothe her. “Maybe the Foundry monitors wouldn’t have crashed out if you hadn’t used that algorithm, sure, but who’s to say that Oliver wouldn’t have spun out on his bike a street later and still lost the guy?”

Brynn does have a point, but Felicity still can’t help but think that Oliver is going to hate her for this. She’s never fucked up so badly before, and being the Hood means so much to her boyfriend, given that this is a crusade that was bestowed upon him by his late father, that she knows he must be frustrated that the criminal got away. She knows it’s unlikely that Oliver will tell her to her face that she’s at fault, but her anxiety is insisting that he’s going to be thinking it, and that it might make her less desirable to him - that Oliver might break up with her because of it.

And if she and Oliver break up, she probably won’t be able to live in the Queen mansion anymore under the Queen’s protection to stop ARGUS from kidnapping and experimenting on her and her daemon to find out why Dust don’t affect them, and then she’ll lose the love of her life, her home _and_ her freedom. Brynn, sensing her rising agitation, shifts into ocelot form on her lap to rub his furry wet head up against her cheek and purr comfortingly.

Felicity doesn’t realize that she and her daemon aren’t alone until the sound of a rumbling growl from the doorway startles her. Her eyes flash over, wide with panic; she curls up into an even tighter ball at the sight of Oliver’s daemon, Strelka, poking her head around the door, which she must have left open a crack. She’s still in her panther form, which she uses to blend into the shadows at night. It’s one of her more mysterious forms that Felicity has rarely seen her in, apart from when she’s run into Oliver arriving home late at night with greasepaint smeared around his eyes, and when she’s been in the Foundry with him.

“Is Oliver home?” Felicity asks Strelka, unable to stop a quiver of dread from entering her voice.

“No, not yet,” the panther replies in her smooth honey tone. “But he’s on his way.”

As she pushes past the door into the bathroom, the darkness drains from her fur to leave a shorter tan pelt behind; her muzzle shortens and strengthens itself, her short ears increase in size and overall her body size shrinks, so she transforms and appears to _melt_ into the much stockier, smaller cat form of a puma. Brynn perks up at the sight. This is one of the forms that Strelka usually takes around Felicity and the Queen family, as it was her Settled form from before the island, when the Dust was extracted and removed from her and Oliver.

The puma gracefully settles down onto her hindquarters, her black-tipped tail flicking back and forth. “He isn’t angry at you, Felicity,” she says, with a twitch of her ears. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my algorithm that crashed the system,” Felicity mumbles shamefully. She fumbles above her to switch the water off, her feet and hands numb from the cold.

“But it was our system that was unable to cope with your highly sophisticated code,” Strelka counters.

“I should have offered to update your system before running my own programs on it.”

“We can go around in circles for hours, Felicity, if that’s what you want,” Strelka replies, pricking her whiskers. “Oliver doesn’t blame you. I don’t blame you. We’ll have to agree to disagree on it being your fault, because my impression was that it was an honest to god mistake and accident.” She freezes and then glances behind her, her ears pressing back against her skull, at the bathroom door that she closed behind her with her tail. “Oliver is back. He’s approaching from the rear of the house and will climb through your bedroom window in a couple of minutes.”

Felicity nods and scrubs at her face, hoping that it isn’t too obvious that all she’s done for the past hour is cry, but then gives up, considering that she’s a dripping wet mess. It’s difficult for her to strip her soaked socks off but with Brynn’s help, the ocelot wrestling with the clinging fabric, she eventually manages to peel them off her feet. She then takes a good five minutes to towel off Brynn, who looks utterly miserable with his water-logged fur, and finally cracks a smile when her daemon licks her face gratefully. Strelka stalks back into her bedroom in front of them and leaps up to lie down at the foot of her bed, resting her head on her paws. The puma watches as Felicity begins rooting through her chest of drawers for some warm pajamas.

She’s still dripping water onto the carpet when Felicity feels a pair of strong, gentle arms envelop her from behind. Through her bond with Brynn, who saw the person sneak up to her, she knows who it is, so she doesn’t freak out. Oliver doesn’t seem to care that she’s soaking wet and still hugs her, resting his entwined hands over her stomach protectively. He’s back in civilian clothes, simple sweats, and a white t-shirt - he’s left his leathers back at the Foundry. The tension leaches from her shoulders and upper back; she didn’t realize that a lot of her anxiety was based off facing off against Oliver in his Hood suit, as she’s not afraid to admit that she does find him intimidating. Exhaling, Felicity sinks into the embrace, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against her boyfriend’s chest.

“Is it some new sort of trend to wear your clothes in the shower?” Oliver whispers.

“If it is, I think I started it,” she responds quietly. She whimpers when she feels the archer prop his chin on the crown of her head. “Oliver…”

“Shh.” Oliver takes a step back so he can turn her around in his arms, hugging her from the front this time. Felicity catches a glimpse of his expression, and is relieved to see that he isn’t mad… he looks calm and kind and sympathetic. And worried, about her. This is the Oliver that she knows well, that she knows most others aren’t privy to seeing. This is Oliver with his protective emotional barriers down, exposing his empathetic side. It’s enough to bring her close to tears again. “Felicity… let me help you get into some dry clothes, okay?”

“Okay,” she rasps.

Felicity stands still and bows her head as Oliver pulls out the pair of silk pajamas Moira gave her for Hanukkah and then methodically begins stripping her of her wet clothes. He could make it something remarkably sexual, but instead, Oliver makes it intimate and doting without being sensual; he kisses her palms affectionately as he removes her arms from her blouse sleeves and is attentive and supportive as he helps her out of her jeans, keeping her steady as he drags the horrible, stiff material down her thighs and calves. Felicity observes his movements with her heart in her throat. At one point, her gaze flickers over to find their daemons; Brynn and Strelka are in their usual cat forms grooming one another peacefully.

Ever the gentleman, Oliver turns his back once he’s undone the clasp on Felicity’s bra so that she has her privacy as she gets her pajama top on, and asks if she wants help with her pants once she’s shimmied new underwear on. Once Felicity is fully dressed, the archer doesn’t hesitate to sweep her off her feet into his arms bridal style, stealing her breath from her. He’s always so good at doing that. Oliver brushes a loving kiss against her forehead, tucking her head onto his shoulder as he carries her over to her dresser, where he sits her down on his lap.

“Can I brush your hair for you?” he asks, wanting her consent.

“You don’t have to,” she mumbles.

Oliver runs his fingers through her wet locks, wringing out some of the extra water to make it easier to get a comb through. “I want to.”

He begins brushing her hair with one of her finer combs, being careful to work out the tangles. Felicity can’t remember the last time somebody brushed her hair for her; it’s incredibly relaxing. She understands why their daemons like grooming each another now - that’s a kind of hair brushing for fur, technically, isn’t it? Oliver then proceeds to blow-dry her hair after massaging in heat-protective spray on the hairdryer’s lowest setting. By the time he’s done, Felicity’s blonde hair is falling in natural loose ringlets that the archer tucks behind her ears. Then he heaves her up into his arms again, this time to carry her over to her bed.

“I’m going to get into bed with you, okay?” he asks her softly.

She nods, and shuffles across the mattress to provide him with some room. To her surprise, Oliver slides in behind her and begins spooning her, his back against the headboard. He pulls the comforter up the bed to cover them both and kisses behind her ear as he tucks it around her, making sure she’s warm.

“I’m not angry,” he tells her, his voice so adoring and soft that Felicity instantly feels reassured. “And I don’t blame you. I’m sure Strelka has already told you that.” His daemon blinks at them lazily, inclining her head in a nod before she returns to grooming Brynn. “Sometimes things just don’t go our way.”

Her throat is thick with emotion. “Things didn’t just ‘not go our way’, the perp full-on escaped.”

“I’ll get him next time,” Oliver responds easily. “We know how to track him down. We have all his bank records and personal information. We may not have caught him tonight, but we’ll get him, Felicity.” He strokes down her arms with his fingertips. “If you’re going to continue to blame yourself… just know that even though I don’t blame you, I forgive you.”

She nods. She feels like a giant weight has been lifted from her shoulders. Raising one of his calloused hands to kiss his bruised knuckles, Felicity whispers tearfully, “Thank you.”

“I love you,” Oliver murmurs.

“I love you too.”

The two of them continue to spoon, Oliver tracing countless and indistinguishable shapes over her palms. Felicity soon finds herself beginning to drift off into a relaxed, meditation-like state in the warmth and safety of her boyfriend’s arms. Oliver doesn’t hate her for her mistakes earlier in the evening; he still loves her. She knows deep down that he loves her no matter what, but her anxiety always creates that painstaking doubt to brew at the back of her mind.

Strelka and Brynn eventually decide to join them at the top of the bed, crawling on their bellies up to curl over their respective humans’ legs, tails wound around one another’s possessively. Felicity is just beginning to fall asleep when she jolts awake with a stuttered inhalation, feeling like her body has been electrified - not electrocuted, but instead wired with an uncontrollable writhing energy that causes her body to vibrate from head to toe. Her eyes now wide open, she sees that Oliver is stroking between Brynn’s ears, mussing his mottled fur there tenderly before flattening it down, scratching at that sensitive spot on the ocelot’s skull.

They’ve started touching each other’s daemons recently, which is considered, perhaps, even more intimate than sex. Normally, touching someone else’s daemon causes that person an immense amount of pain, but if the two people trust each other implicitly and love each other, it can actually be pleasurable for them to touch each other’s daemons. Felicity can still remember the first time that she touched Strelka, and Oliver’s reaction. It was an accident; she and Oliver were eating lunch together down in the mansion kitchens and when Strelka brushed past Felicity in her wolf form, Felicity found herself instinctively reaching out to stroke down her back admiring the streaks in her dark fur.

Oliver dropped the plate he was carrying so it shattered on the floor, but instead of collapsing to the ground in agony… released a moan of not pain, but arousal. Felicity remembers being mortified and stammering out an apology… and Oliver awkwardly having to retreat to his bedroom for a cold shower. He touched Brynn later that night in the Foundry for the first time, trailing his finger’s down the ocelot’s pelt; Felicity instantly felt pleasure explode and rush through her entire body like ice through her veins, knocking the wind from her and sending her to her knees as she panted.

Judging by the slight smirk on Oliver’s face that she spots when she cranes her neck back, gasping, he’s doing this on purpose, either trying to distract her from her own self-destructive thoughts… or trying to get her riled up in a new way. Well, two can play at that game. Felicity buries her hands into Strelka’s wiry fur around her scruff, raking her fingers down her spine. While the puma purrs and arches into her touch, Oliver bucks beneath her, his eyes squeezed closed and mouth agape as pleasure wracks through his form.

Smug now that she’s able to elicit such a reaction from him, Felicity tries to shift onto her knees so she can reach Strelka’s belly to rub it - and yelps when Oliver growls and catches her around the waist, throwing her on her back down on the bed and towering over her. She stares up at him, breathing heavily, as he pins her wrists with one hand and uses the other to hike up her pajama shirt and stroke over her hip.

“You’re such a tease,” he growls, blue eyes gleaming. “Jesus, Felicity, do you know how hard it was for me to keep my hands off you when I was stripping you earlier? And now you do _this?_ ”

“You started it,” she replies with a breathless laugh.

“You did,” Strelka admits. A hasty glance over at her daemon’s direction reveals, much to Felicity’s amusement, that Brynn has shifted back into his ermine form and coiled around Strelka, like a furry white scarf around the puma’s neck. “Don’t look at me like that, Oliver. We may be Separated but I still get _some_ of your thoughts, and you were hoping Felicity would react like that.”

Oliver scowls at his daemon, accusing her, “Narc!” but then swiftly attacks Felicity with kisses, dotting little kisses all the way down her face, neck and to her collarbones, making her squeal because of how much it tickles.

“Not so much of a shitty, shitty day anymore, is it?” Brynn snickers at her.

“Oliver, Oliver, stop!” she tries to get out through her giggles. “We - we can’t - your mother, sister and step-father are down the hall -”

“Perks of living in the mansion of a bunch of billionaires?” Oliver raises an eyebrow at her, grinning. “ _Super_ sound-proofed walls.”

He continues to kiss and tickle her until Felicity shouts Uncle, her diaphragm aching because of how much she’s laughed. Oliver collapses down beside her on the bed on his front, smiling at her as he rests his head on his hands, and Felicity takes the opportunity to vault up on top of him and then flop down onto his neck, kissing the nape of his neck.

She feels so much lighter now. She was feeling quite depressed and despondent only about half an hour ago, but the archer has managed to lift her out of her low-spirited mood. Oliver always calls himself the darkness to her light, the yin to her yang, but what he doesn’t realize is that there’s a brightness inside of him, a pure goodness hidden in his soul that is revealed when he’s surrounded by the ones he loves. The archer may believe he has a black heart, but beneath the outer thin layer of darkness is a golden core. Strelka, with her compassionate and kind-hearted nature, is proof of that. Yes, she and Oliver may not be very connected anymore what with their partial Separation, but she is still a little sliver of his soul.

“Stay with me tonight,” she requests quietly. “In my room. I want to share my bed with my boyfriend.”

Oliver startles beneath her. “Are you sure?” he asks, his tone hesitant. “You know we can’t cuddle in our sleep. I have dangerous nightmares. I could lash out and hurt you. Strelka could accidentally hurt you and Brynn.”

“We trust you both,” Brynn says, his tiny ermine nose twitching. He’s been nibbling playfully at Strelka’s ear, and she’s flicking it at him, almost dislodging the smaller daemon from his spot perched on the top of her head.

“We do,” Felicity agrees.

She has to resist the urge to reach beneath Oliver’s t-shirt to trace his scars with her fingertips; she knows that he knows that she’s comfortable with those badges of survival and suffering and strength marring his skin, but they haven’t been naked around each other yet - they haven’t been half-naked for more than a few minutes, at most. She knows that one of the only things Brynn gets nervous about is when he comes across Strelka’s scars when grooming her, as the daemon always stiffens up and gets broody, much like her human often does, when attention is drawn to marks of her past trauma.

Oliver seems to sense that she’s lost in thought, because he rolls beneath her until he’s lying on his back, with their fronts pressed together. With her ear resting on his chest, Felicity can hear his heart thudding steadily. It’s immensely relaxing, and lulls her back into that sleepy state. She wonders if her heart will sync to Oliver’s during the night, remembering that psychological study performed that proved that romantic partners unconsciously match breathing and heart rates. Caressing up the length of her spine, the archer frames her face with his palms so he can kiss her firmly on the lips once more before dropping his head back into the pillows.

“It’s late,” he murmurs. “And we have to get up early tomorrow for breakfast because Mom’s invited Tommy and Nypha, and Malcolm and Amdusias, around.”

Felicity grimaces. While she and Tommy have become friends over the last two months, and his kit fox daemon has become more comfortable around Brynn… Malcolm Merlyn and his spotted hyena daemon Amdusia make her and Brynn very uneasy. “Is there any way we can get out of that?”

“Unfortunately not,” Oliver sighs. “But Dig has promised to take us to Big Belly for lunch as a reward for surviving, if we make it out alive.”

“If we have guests for breakfast that means I’m not gonna be able to guzzle coffee like I should be having it via IV as I usually do, am I?”

“My mother will probably limit you to one cup instead of your usual three.” He pauses before adding apologetically, “And it’s not going to be anywhere near as strong as your normal brew.”

She huffs. “Okay, then we definitely need to get to sleep now otherwise I will be a literal zombie in front of Tommy and Mr Merlyn tomorrow.” Peering down at the foot of the bed where their daemons are laying, she pats the space beside them on the mattress. “Come on you two. Up here. Brynn, please can you get the lights?”

A purr like the roar of an engine erupts from Strelka’s throat as the daemon curls up on their left side, her back following the length of her human and long puma tail glancing down Oliver’s leg in a fond gesture; this might, perhaps, be the closest that Felicity has ever seen Strelka and Oliver, as the two of them aren’t particularly affectionate with one another and generally avoid touching. Scuttling down Felicity’s back in ermine form, Brynn stretches out with an adorable yawn before jumping off the bed, transforming into a goldfinch mid-air so he can flutter over to the light switch to flip it, casting them into darkness. He switches into ocelot form the moment he lands on the bed and snuggles up to the other cat daemon.

The four of them lie in comfortable silence in the pitch-black bedroom until Oliver breaks it by whispering, “Felicity?”

“Hmm?” she replies sleepily.

“If you ever have a bad day, you can always come to me,” he tells her, his voice soft. “And I promise you, there’s no mistake you could make that would stop me from loving you.”

Felicity bits her lip to hold back her tears. “God, I don’t deserve you.”

“I think it’s me who doesn’t deserve you.”

“Do you ever think about what our lives might be like if I hadn’t turned up at Starling General to try and save you from ARGUS, that first day you were back?” she asks thickly. “Do you ever imagine where we might be, or who we would be, if you and your mom hadn’t saved Brynn and I from being turned into science experiments by welcoming me into your home and giving me your protection?”

“I don’t need to,” Oliver whispers back. “Because this - _this right here_ \- is the life I want and will always want. You and Brynn by mine and Strelka’s sides, safe and happy, and keeping the two of us safe and happy. What ifs don’t matter to me because this is my _what if_ , this is something I never could have imagined for myself after I returned from Lian Yu, consumed by that darkness. You brought light into my life and I wouldn’t change that for the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed! would really appreciate if you left kudos and comments!!
> 
> twitter: @lexiblackbriar  
> tumblr: @alexiablackbriar13


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